


just keep your lamp all trimmed and burning

by spiraetspera



Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiraetspera/pseuds/spiraetspera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>”That won't be necessary, Tasha, nobody died...”</p><p>”Yes, I'm sure this whole ”rescuing the World” kind of thing was downright fun. Pity nobody invited me.”</p><p> </p><p>Three times Natasha slept at his place and one time he finally slept at hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just keep your lamp all trimmed and burning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JazzHands](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzHands/gifts).



”i run the numbers through the floor  
here's how it goes:  
i crack the codes  
i crack the codes,  
you end the war.”

andrew bird – not a robot, but a ghost

 

 

 

 

1)

By the time the two of them reaches the nearest town, it’s past two in the morning, meaning everything is either closed or deserted. So instead of waiting the sun to rise (such is nature) and fears to settle (such is man), Rook decides to carry this newly orphaned child into his home for a little while.

”What is your name?” he asks as he drives; and it’s a tender murmur; a promise. (you can trust me)

She does not answer.

The flat which is extremely austere and even more plain, obscured some more with an old photo of his parents delicately placed far away from his bed. Kafka’s Metamorphosis lays on the miniature sized table, opened on the twenty-second page, pages yellow; letters wan. 

The girl surveys the room up and down, acts like an intruder, while he boils some milk and pours the remaining amount of honey into a large mug. He read somewhere that this recipe aids quick and dreamless slumber (secretly remembers his mother used to hand him the exact same drink when he had nightmares).

Fortunately, she drinks the whole thing up before he could blink two and looks around timidly. Then raises her hand and points out another book, hidden under a stack of folders brought from work: the Three Sisters by Chekhov.

”Would you like me to read from it?”

The child nods slowly and carefully plants herself on the chair where he prefers to sit on during the evenings, and within ten minutes as he reads Natasha's monologue aloud, she falls asleep.

Then wakes up screaming two hours later so Dominic continues reading, brushing her clammy hair our of her eyes. They maintain this ritual until daybreak when he collapses on the bed, alert and careful, next to her thin form.

 

2)

”She fucking died during the play, Dominic.”

”Language.”

”Not the point.”

Natasha is thirteen, eating up her third foster home, but this time it is truly an exception; an unfortunate accident made death swallow her caretaker first: the lady, a widow of old age, died from a heart attack while watching the supposedly entertaining and modern version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Dominic drives the same car as ever, looks, smells and feels like six years ago; but she notes that his eyes are filled with fatigue and exasperation as he studies her in the mirror. 

And a bit of annoyance.

”Where were you at such hour?” there is a hint of suspicion and maybe worry lingering in his voice, but that's stupid, because this is Dominic responsible-and-too-cool-to-care Rook.

A smile flaunts near her lips. 

”With friends. A new place opened near Penarth and we wanted to check it out.” 

Okay, definitely annoyance.

It's only in his flat, during their homely dinner he comments further on the matter.

”You haven't mentioned these friends before.”

Here we go, she thinks and rolls her eyes.

”We hardly talk and never meet.”

Dominic looks like he has been hit with a larger object, and for a moment, she thinks she can see the hurt too. His jaw moves on its own accord, his face rigid.

Good.

”I have a lot of work, and your daily life is not really my business.”

The hand which holds her sandwich freezes. Natasha tastes bile in her mouth and a bitterness so sudden she wants (needs) to vomit. 

”I am going to sleep.”

It's not that she doesn't trust him anymore, because the bond they share is made of something stronger than words and deeper than the soil humanity walks upon. It's just she fucking wants to scream at him, to him, into him. Craves to put her arms around his head and maybe, just maybe...

She stands up and probes to find the walls to find the settee he sleeps on. Dominic's breathes steadily calm; eyes shut. 

”Is there a problem?”

And then:

”You are rolling your eyes again.”

”Thought you were sleeping.”

There is silence, but just for a heartbeat. 

Natasha's voice comes out of nowhere; light and low, like Dominic's silhouette in the dark.

”I started to really like her. She was not like the Thompson's, you know, acting like I was some kind of psycho lunatic.” A gulp. They both know what she is talking about. ”She even baked me a cake, for gods' sake.” 

She is openly and soundlessly crying now, tears rushing down her nose; balancing down their way from there.

Dominic doesn't say a word; but sits up, which roughly translates to ”sit down, please do.” She figures he is too stunned or completely unexperienced socially to offer an embrace.  
So she reaches for his hands (which becomes his wrist) and clutches it, like a priest would his Bible or a nun must clutch her rosemary.

They prevail. 

This is what they do best anyway.

 

3)

By the time the ambulance arrives, he is half-insane from guilt and basically ready to tatter anyone to little pieces, devil or not. Morbidly enough, he finds these feeling gratifying after all these years of neutral regularity.

An ugly bandage is being wrapped around her neck, but the scar, just like the memory, will be etched into her very being. Dominic wonders if there is a termination, a dead end for her, collecting all these nightmarish knowledge about the world and concludes he had been irresponsible, selfish and if there was some sort of sick justice in the world, he would have been the one punished. 

Indeed, this justice, which was held on him, was a repulsive one. Tasha bleeding and dying was a long-awaited warning, a message, an opprobrium to his conscious: You have gone too far, and there is no going back if you continue.

”Are you her brother?” the medical assistant asks as she steps out from the room where they mended her throat. A room of blood, probably. His brain is a vertigo; and Dominic tries so hard to think but can only shake his head.

”A friend” he mumbles at last and grips the chair he could not sit for another moment.

The nurse smiles -she thinks she understand this throttling worry that slowly and surely devours his mind – and pats his shoulder.

His grandfather used to do this, and he hated him.

”We gave her a strong sedative so Miss Myles will sleep till the morning. Can you notify her family about her whereabouts?”

”Of course” he answers, voice now polite and steady. Wishes the woman would leave.

”Just wanted to make sure she has a caring hand or two.”

Caring.

He remembers that she has a place near Bristol; went to school there, but Dominic is confident Tasha would never return to the appointed foster home; her former and luckily the last family chosen.

But now she needs care and all she has (ever had, will always have) is Dominic Rook.

When at last he can force himself near her bed, he is reminded how very young she still is, nearing toward twenty, but somehow still wide-eyed and thinking he is a hero. The thought alone that she trusted him with her life again makes his core churn and his chest burn with something akin to neverending sorrow and maybe (definitely) like neverending tenderness.

Dominic frees himself from his gray jacket, and accepts. And he drops his head onto the white-soft hospital matters and next, very, very near her soft hand.

 

4)

It's Hal, but she can' t really tell, because that someone is essentially bellowing into the phone.

”An accident really... the only human; the devil, .. and Rook appeared... stopped, but he didn't listen... badly hurt.”

Instead of screaming, Natasha grips the phone and hardens her voice, so that she would be listened to.

”Where the fuck is he, tell me. Tell me now.”

*_*_*

Although Barry is still eerie coloured and tainted with unspoken secrets and spilled blood, Natasha feels like embracing each one of the trio when she parks the car and finds him sitting non-chalantly on the sidewalk just at the entrance of the restaurant she worked a little while ago. Flashbacks dance in her brain, but all she perceives is him, so she rushes, fearing he will disappear.

Dominic acts like it's a fucking usual Sunday afternoon, not like he just experienced a near-apocalyptic crisis and a devilish possession. He stands up, collar and tie in rags, suit in patches, white shirttail clearly visible. She deposits the scene in her memory under quality blackmail materials and offers a lift home.

”That won't be necessary, Tasha, nobody died...”

”Yes, I'm sure this whole ”rescuing the World” kind of thing was downright fun. Pity nobody invited me.”

And then he looks at her, just like he could see her in a whole new light, or finally, a light at last. He looks at her just like a young man of twenty looked at a thin girl of seven in a darkened cave smelling of decaying blood and some hope.

”Alright.” Dominic nods, and Natasha can finally take the breath she wasn't aware of holding.

*_*_*

The room she rents is very simple with yellowed tapestry and century old furnitures, but the remnants of cheap chinese food and an almost-emptied teacup proves that indeed, Natasha lives here. 

As he looks around the room, she suddenly becomes shy, but would never admit; only the hands fidgeting around her scarf provide evidence, but when he turns, she moves to prepare some fresh tea.

”You are reading Margaret Mitchell.”

She looks up, perplexed.

”Oh no, it is Michael's- he must have left it here.”

Dominic's face is curious.

”Your fiancé?”

”Was.” she retorts softly, waiting for the water to boil, not looking him in the eyes. ”Is it with two sugars and no milk?”

”Yes.” 

Before she can realize, both of them moves, and they crush against each other close to her tiny wardrobe. Dominic smells of starch and printed paper with undertones of cologne and the long-know fragrance of death. He is tall, she notes, all bones and sinew as he clings to her form.

And she rocks him gently, and maybe she says or he does; ”it was you, only ever you.”

It was such a long way for them; an arduous route towards each other: all those past efforts and longings mostly in vain – for such is the nature of men.

But he is here now, and will stay tomorrow for the future is bright – 

 

 

and such is the nature of love.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a bunch of writings, but I would like to thanks JazzHands' magnificent fic; and Ellis' graphics on Tumblr. You all rock, guys and I cannot thank you enough.
> 
> Also, if you have time, listen to this wonderfulity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d6JECm_Q94


End file.
